The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz (Mystery)

The second installment of Horowitz’ self-referential detective series starring himself as the semi-bumbling, self-deprecating sidekick to the enigmatic Detective Daniel Hawthorne. Horowitz writes fantastic mysteries — they are convoluted in the most delightful ways, are full of interesting characters, and progress at the perfect pace (also — I never do figure it out early!) One of the benefits of this particular series is also gaining some insight into other aspects of Horowitz’ writing life — the production issues for Foyles War, the interactions with agents and booksellers, and parts of the Writer’s Process (as experienced by Mr. Horowitz).

I don’t want to give away *anything* in the plot, but it covers a wide range of places, people, time, and professions — divorce lawyers, (very) expensive wine, literary snobs, interior decorators, spelunkers, forensic accountants, muscular dystrophy, and the NHS. Horowitz does an impressive job of applying diversity to characters with no regard to stereotypical expectations. I did find myself struggling to constantly sift out the fact from the fiction, which told me more about myself and my own neuroses than about the book — it doesn’t matter a bit! A fun read.

Great for fans of Robert Galbraith.

Thank you to Harper Collins and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on May 28th, 2019.

About Me

I’m a voracious reader and life-long patron of libraries and bookstores, living in a house of apocalyptic book spillage. Books are my entertainment, education, and exposure to the myriad forms of human experience. Retired from a high-tech career, I volunteer for the African Library Project, a nonprofit devoted to building libraries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Reading Quotes…

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. –Haruki Murakami

A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it. –Edward P. Morgan

You know you’ve read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend. –Paul Sweeney

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” ― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.” ― Groucho Marx

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.” ― Erasmus

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” ― Groucho Marx

“I cannot live without books.” ― Thomas Jefferson

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” ― James Baldwin

“There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.” ― Irving Stone, Clarence Darrow for the Defense

“The world was hers for the reading.” ― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“My library is an archive of longings.” ― Susan Sontag

“What a blessing it is to love books as I love them;- to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!” ― Thomas Babington Macaulay

“Books: a beautifully browsable invention that needs no electricity and exists in a readable form no matter what happens.” ― Nicholson Baker

“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel… is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin

“Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?” ― Cornelia Funke

“The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.” ― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.” ― Anne Herbert

“Elend: I kind of lost track of time…
Breeze: For two hours?
Elend: There were books involved.” ― Brandon Sanderson, The Well of Ascension

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! — When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.” ― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice